Hannah’s Pick of the Week: Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar

‘”What? Oh.”

A pause; Amira has never seen a river.

“No–it’s nothing like that when they fly above you. It’s…a creaking, like a stove door with no squeak in it, as if the geese are machines dressed in flesh and feathers. It’s a beautiful sound–beneath the honking it’s a low drone, but if they’re flying quietly, it’s like…clothing, somehow, like if you listened just right, you might find yourself wearing wings.“

Amal El-Mohtar, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories, page 8

She begins with a fairytale. Well, actually two fairytales, squashed together in a beautiful mixing of worlds: a woman doomed to don iron shoes in order to save her bear husband, and a woman doomed to sit atop a glass mountain until her true love can make it to the top, where she’ll offer them a golden apple. When Tabitha and Amira meet, their worlds are irrevocably changed.

And within this breathless convocation of short stories and poetry, built up year by year by El-Mohtar, women interact with each other in wondrous, overlapping ways. Some stories, such as “The Green Book,” are macabre and gothic; others, like “The Truth About Owls,” make you hold your head in your hands and want to sob. Listening to Rachel Elizabeth Smith narrate this collection has been nothing short of a delight.  I was already a fan of “John Hollowback and the Witch” when I heard it as a complement to El-Mohtar’s fantasy novella The River Has Roots, and hearing it again just added on to the experience. Each segment is different, whether it’s told to us in letters, or diary entries, or in Arabic.

If you have a soft spot for fairytales; for female friendship; for luscious, lyrical imagery; or for all of the above, and enjoyed The River Has Roots, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is the next read for you.